Warkworth is pretty well deserted at 8 am on a Monday, except for the queue outside the Diagnostic Medlab “collection centre”. They “collect” your specimens, and the report goes to your doctor. The queue this morning was considerable, all elderly gents when I arrived, standing outside in the frost awaiting whoever might arrive and open the place up. Each of us had thought we were smart to show up early. Each of us was wrong. The frosty morning was no help to those with prostate problems. Some if not most had been fasting, on instruction, and were wondering how long it would be before they got home to breakfast.
Others showed up. Some women, one arriving on her motorised module, whatever those things are called. The conversation outside in the cold was beyond belief. Opinions were traded, on everything from the government to the weather to the All Blacks to medical care these days to the state of the roads around Warkworth – and to a generally gloomy view of human prospects.
Botox is irrelevant in this company. Gravity had triumphed. So had the general failure of the education system. We crowded into the waiting room and sat there like some kind of human demolition yard. The neurones that were available were devoted to remembering where we thought we were in the queue. The wits among us made their excruciating comments, and laughed at their own witticisms. Others of us simply endured.
The waiting room was devoid of reading matter, and a notice stood on the counter to the effect that there was a yellow alert about Swine ‘Flu, and therefore we could not read the Woman’s Weekly because it could harbour bugs.
One by one we were called, to be taken into a cubicle, bled and in some cases equipped with some plastic gear and directed to the toilet.
This is pathology, to which my wife has dedicated her life for many years -- although she has always dealt more with soft tissue and bones, histo-pathology. Nevertheless, the pathologists’ reports will affect the lives of these people, in some cases deeply or terminally.
I actually don’t care, ultimately, what any of it says about me.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Setting Ego aside
I am trying to remember how it was I went to all the trouble to borrow Honor Moore: The Bishop’s Daughter. The local Rodney library system didn’t have it, so it had to be ordered on Interloan, which cost me $5.00. Honor Moore is the daughter of Paul Moore, who was the Episcopalian (Anglican) Bishop of New York. She is still locked in battle with her father, who died in 2003 – and also with her mother who died of colon cancer – and this book is a tedious tour around most of her major dysfunctions.
Both Paul Moore and his wife Jenny were products of privilege and great wealth. Paul served in the US Marines and came home a World War II hero, with a bullet hole right through his chest and out the back. It had my name on it, but I guess they must have spelled it wrong. Anglo-Catholic, tall and handsome, all the right connections... it was inevitable that Paul Moore would romp up the hierarchical ladder in the church. He also fathered some nine children with Jenny – and Honor, who writes this book, is the first.
Father Moore got stuck into innovative inner-city ministry, in Newark, in Indianapolis, in Washington, and New York. This is muscular theology, and Fr/Bishop Paul could certainly raise the funds. It’s all very admirable, but you know all the time that none of this tribe will ever lack for a dime. They can always retreat to their mountain pad in the Adirondacks. Mother Jenny was sliding seriously downhill... but hell! it’s a jungle out there. I’m sure I don’t know how you remain sane when the babies keep coming, and your husband is poncing around in medieval gear accompanied by choir and organ and acolytes. Honor, our writer, flees the family nest to live in New York as a poet, dramatist, and whatnot. So we have drugs, dedicated promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion, regular visits to the therapist... You do have to wonder about these Manhattan therapists.
Then it turns out that Paul the Bishop, all along, indeed right from his days in the Marines, has had another life as homosexual. Not bad when you’ve fathered nine kids. At this point, gathering together all my renowned willingness to understand and appreciate human difference, I start to struggle with the dependence of these people on image and narcissism, pills, therapy, sexual adventure, relentless combat with each other and with their massive cosseted highly expensive Egos. I suppose Honor’s written reflections on all this are lucid to her. They are largely incomprehensible to me. Get a life, is what I say.
Those years, the 1960s and 70s onwards, were when we discovered and carefully nurtured the Ego. I’m OK, You’re OK. Millions of westerners went looking for themselves. How I feel became the measure of everything. That is what this book depicts. It also depicts the sad, chronic juvenilism of people who have never grasped that Ego is what really has to go. Love and freedom tend to be in proportion to the receding of the voracious demanding Ego. Letting it go is a product of contemplative prayer. And what is left? The person God has always seen and known and loved.
Both Paul Moore and his wife Jenny were products of privilege and great wealth. Paul served in the US Marines and came home a World War II hero, with a bullet hole right through his chest and out the back. It had my name on it, but I guess they must have spelled it wrong. Anglo-Catholic, tall and handsome, all the right connections... it was inevitable that Paul Moore would romp up the hierarchical ladder in the church. He also fathered some nine children with Jenny – and Honor, who writes this book, is the first.
Father Moore got stuck into innovative inner-city ministry, in Newark, in Indianapolis, in Washington, and New York. This is muscular theology, and Fr/Bishop Paul could certainly raise the funds. It’s all very admirable, but you know all the time that none of this tribe will ever lack for a dime. They can always retreat to their mountain pad in the Adirondacks. Mother Jenny was sliding seriously downhill... but hell! it’s a jungle out there. I’m sure I don’t know how you remain sane when the babies keep coming, and your husband is poncing around in medieval gear accompanied by choir and organ and acolytes. Honor, our writer, flees the family nest to live in New York as a poet, dramatist, and whatnot. So we have drugs, dedicated promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion, regular visits to the therapist... You do have to wonder about these Manhattan therapists.
Then it turns out that Paul the Bishop, all along, indeed right from his days in the Marines, has had another life as homosexual. Not bad when you’ve fathered nine kids. At this point, gathering together all my renowned willingness to understand and appreciate human difference, I start to struggle with the dependence of these people on image and narcissism, pills, therapy, sexual adventure, relentless combat with each other and with their massive cosseted highly expensive Egos. I suppose Honor’s written reflections on all this are lucid to her. They are largely incomprehensible to me. Get a life, is what I say.
Those years, the 1960s and 70s onwards, were when we discovered and carefully nurtured the Ego. I’m OK, You’re OK. Millions of westerners went looking for themselves. How I feel became the measure of everything. That is what this book depicts. It also depicts the sad, chronic juvenilism of people who have never grasped that Ego is what really has to go. Love and freedom tend to be in proportion to the receding of the voracious demanding Ego. Letting it go is a product of contemplative prayer. And what is left? The person God has always seen and known and loved.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Contemplative?
Someone – Karl Rahner? – wrote that the church of the future will be contemplative. Can’t see it myself, although I certainly agree that it should be. The church exists deeply immersed in the culture of individual success or failure narratives. People assume they are the authors of their own lives, for better or for worse. Everyone has an opinion, and listening is a rare commodity. Professional listeners now charge a fee. All of this, it seems to me, is the diametric opposite of contemplative spirituality.
That being the case, the church had better get used to being not regretfully but properly counter-cultural. The old word for that is prophetic -- confronting and challenging the principalities and powers and the prevailing culture. While as we know there are plenty of centres of authentic spirituality throughout the church and beyond, it is not clear to me that the church itself is changing in that direction. Power and status still matter and become the default positions in the local parish and the church’s wider and weightier counsels.
We have become so enchanted by our personal narratives – in the cult of competitive CVs, in the counselling industry, on TV, radio and in the print media... even narratives of failure, shame and disgrace carry their own value. Victims have narratives which can earn them recognition, status and money. The celebrity cult, all-pervasive to the point of nausea, is simply a solipsistic performance desperate for an audience. Michael Jackson, his ruined face, terminal drug addiction and his crazed devotees... his hideous funeral epitomised for me all that is sad, empty, lost.
The cupboard is bare. The grand narrative which said that you could succeed if you knew how, is everywhere discredited. The church has lost its way, since Jesus clearly taught otherwise than hierarchies, status, power and control. And somewhat terrifyingly, the new grand narrative seems to be apocalypse, environmental catastrophe. A recent letter to the editor of a newspaper informed us that the writer intends to hang on to his guns, even against the law, because “they will eventually be needed”.
This is why, for me at any rate, contemplative spirituality, Christian Meditation, the disciplines of St Benedict as an oblate, have come to be so meaningful. They are the only way I know, these days, to embody and live my original commitment, long ago, to the way of Christ.
That being the case, the church had better get used to being not regretfully but properly counter-cultural. The old word for that is prophetic -- confronting and challenging the principalities and powers and the prevailing culture. While as we know there are plenty of centres of authentic spirituality throughout the church and beyond, it is not clear to me that the church itself is changing in that direction. Power and status still matter and become the default positions in the local parish and the church’s wider and weightier counsels.
We have become so enchanted by our personal narratives – in the cult of competitive CVs, in the counselling industry, on TV, radio and in the print media... even narratives of failure, shame and disgrace carry their own value. Victims have narratives which can earn them recognition, status and money. The celebrity cult, all-pervasive to the point of nausea, is simply a solipsistic performance desperate for an audience. Michael Jackson, his ruined face, terminal drug addiction and his crazed devotees... his hideous funeral epitomised for me all that is sad, empty, lost.
The cupboard is bare. The grand narrative which said that you could succeed if you knew how, is everywhere discredited. The church has lost its way, since Jesus clearly taught otherwise than hierarchies, status, power and control. And somewhat terrifyingly, the new grand narrative seems to be apocalypse, environmental catastrophe. A recent letter to the editor of a newspaper informed us that the writer intends to hang on to his guns, even against the law, because “they will eventually be needed”.
This is why, for me at any rate, contemplative spirituality, Christian Meditation, the disciplines of St Benedict as an oblate, have come to be so meaningful. They are the only way I know, these days, to embody and live my original commitment, long ago, to the way of Christ.
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